Mordecai Gebirtig was born in Poland, Krakow. He lived his whole life among the Jewish working-class quarter. On June 4,1942, his life ended prematurely by a Nazi bullet in the Krakow Ghetto during the infamous “ Bloody Thursday”. He was a very distinguished “folk” artist in Yiddish literature and music. Mordecai served for five years in the Austro-Hungarian army. He never studied music. He enjoyed playing a shepherd’s pipe , and played piano with one finger. Gebrich was employed as a furniture worker .Music and theater were his hobbies. Mordecai had three daughters, for whom he wrote and performed his poems. His diary entries resemble most of his songs. The words in the poems were set to improvised melodies.His lyrics describe the themes of eastern European Jewish life in the 1920s and 1930s. One of Gebirtig's best-known songs is "S'brent" (Our Little Town is Burning), written in response to the 1936 pogrom of Jews in the shtetl (small town) of Przytyk.Later this song was adopted by the Jewish youth of Krakow and others as a battle song against the Nazis.

EhglishOne, two, three, four, we are unemployed.We have not heard all month long,in the factory the hammer sound.Tools are cold, forgotten,the rust will eat them.Let's go around on the streets,and spend our time without work like the idle rich